


MMBA

by deianaera



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-30
Updated: 2006-10-30
Packaged: 2018-01-24 05:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deianaera/pseuds/deianaera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vetinari. Voldemort. Machiavelli. And real Uberwaldian sausages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	MMBA

**Author's Note:**

> Originally titled "Lesson One", this was written in Oct. 2006 for Omniocular on LJ.
> 
> 1 - This story takes place during Vetinari's Grand Sneer (described in The Fifth Elephant) and before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  
> 2 - Written for Omniocular's October crossover challenge, in response to prompt # 58: "Lord Vetinari sits down with Lord Voldemort to give him some much-needed advice on being an effective ruthless leader."  
> 3 - There are two passages within this story that are direct quotes from Machiavelli's The Prince. These quotes were pulled from http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm.

Atop the highest peak on Discworld, the gods, great and small and every size in between live. Blind Io sits atop a marble bench, watching the other gods seeking amusements. At this particular moment, several gods were involved in a complicated board game. Just as Offler, the Crocodile God was about to pick up the dice to roll, the Lady swept into the room.

Fate muttered, “New player.”

Whispering in Offler’s ear, she convinced him to give her the dice, gently taking them from his clawed and scaly hands.

She smiled, and placed her token on the board. With a breath for the dice, she rolled perfect sevens. Offler swore. “They are only six-sided dice-!” he began before being cut of by a sizzling thunderbolt from Io’s staff. Everyone knew the rules. You never said her name; everyone, even the gods themselves, could be subject to her whims.

With a sly smile she moved her piece to the center of the board, which became a dense forest labeled “M.M.B.A.”

“M.M.B.A.? What’s that?”

Again, only her sly smile answered.

~/~/~/~

Havelock Vetinari was, well, brooding. Though barely in his twenties, he was well-educated by the Assassins Guild in Ankh-Morpork, and not given to hormonal moods. And yet, right now, he felt rejected. She had thrown him out of her home! Lady Margolotta, seductress, temptress, and, he sighed, vampire. He had enjoyed her company, enjoyed spending time with her, teaching her about what truly mattered in this world and just when he began to hope for something a little more intimate – that didn’t involve blood – she tossed him aside like a drained corpse. Yes, he was slight perturbed, which was probably why he took the left fork into the dense forest labeled “M.M.B.U.” (which stood for Miles and Miles of Bloody Uberwald) on his map instead of the right fork, which would have led him to Lancre.

As he stepped into the forest proper, he felt a tingling sensation across his body, like he had crossed some invisible tripwire. After a quick check for spider webs, he continued down the path into the forest. Within an hour it was too dark to see and a chill wind blew through his thick clothes. Searching about, he found a small clearing a short distance away and settled in to make camp for the night.

He was shivering by the time he erected his tent and had the fire going. Displaying his rare culinary skill, he spitted several fresh Uberwaldian sausages, fresh made this morning by Lady Margolotta’s Igor, on a sharpened stick and set them to cook over the fire. It was the smell and the heat that drew the snake.

It slithered out form underneath a nearby bush, huge and mottled green with brown. The firelight cast a shadow around it that made the snake appear hooded, like a cobra. The snake slithered to the fire and reared up, showing its impressive length and girth. A plain dagger scraped the snake’s belly before planting itself in the dirt. The snake hissed and moved around the dagger, preparing to strike at one who threatened it. It saw the boy, long and whipcord thin, smelling of magic and holding another dagger. Suddenly a different thought filtered into the snake’s mind. The body of the snake collapsed, twitching in the dirt and a shaded fog began to coalesce around it.

Vetinari’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. He drew forth an amulet from his jacket, an ancient family heirloom said to protect travelers from Uberwald. (Not from anything specific, mind you. Just from Uberwald itself. It is commonly believed by those outside of Uberwald that only the Gods could carry an amulet large enough to name everything a traveler would need to be protected from in Uberwald.) The fog thinned and swarmed around him, surrounding him, but not actually touching him. Tendrils of the fog probed at his mouth and nose, but never quite gaining entry. Encased in the cocoon, Vetinari felt like he was slowly being suffocating. Eventually he collapsed on the ground, the sausages burning in the fire.

~/~/~/~

At first Vetinari wasn’t sure if he was dead or dreaming. A dream, he could escape. Death, well, an Assassin doesn’t really need to wonder if he’s dead, does he?

Peering into the grey, flowing cotton background, he saw another person. He was tall, young and handsome, clothed in a black robe.

“And who might you be?” Vetinari heard the dream-boy ask him.

“You’re in my dream, why don’t you tell me?”

“Ah, that would be a tale. My name is Tom. Tom Riddle. And I think I may need your help.” The voice was high and cold, trying – and failing – to charm. Vetinari was sure he had made cadavers that had more warmth than this dream-figment of his.

“What kind of help do you need?”

“You see, some time ago, I was being persecuted by a powerful wizard. He was old, powerful, and jealous of his position. I was once his student. When I tried to move out of his shadow, began to move out on my own, he became furious with me. I fought back when I could, but he would stop at nothing to destroy me for leaving his grasp. Finally, he cornered me and cast a terrible curse on me, taking away my body and leaving less than a ghost. I need someone mortal, corporeal, to help me regain my body so I can defeat this wicked wizard.”

Vetinari stared at him for a moment and then laughed, a rusty, barking sound. “Try again.”

Tom looked shocked. “What do you mean?”

“You actually expect me to believe that pile of dung you just spouted? Give me a good reason to continue this hallucination.”

Tom’s handsome features began to melt, his pleasant mien shifting to one thinner, scalier, more snake than man.

“I can give you power. I am Lord Voldemort, nothing is beyond my power! I can make you the most powerful wizard to walk the earth, give you anything you desire, wealth, eternal life. Name your price!”

“For my body? I don’t think so. Besides, there are other, better ways of obtaining power.” Vetinari replied loftily.

Voldemort looked at the youth, so confident, so calm. Slowly, his features shifted back down into the handsome boy he had been, becoming Tom Riddle once more. “What do you know of power,” he said disdainfully.

Vetinari smirked. “More than you do, obviously.”

“I have more knowledge, more power, more skill-“

“And yet here you are, how did you say it, oh yes, ‘less than a ghost’.”

“And if you were me, what would you do?” Tom spat.

“Well,” Vetinari said, reclining against the formless shadows, “why don’t you try telling me what really happened to you.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed into narrow slits that glowed red for a moment before he relented. “Alright, why not? After you know my true glory, you will agree to serve me, out of fear, if nothing else.”

As Tom told young Havelock Vetinari of his life, from the orphanage to his fall as Lord Voldemort, his form shifted, as his shade relived each phase of his life. Finally, the tale ended, and Lord Voldemort became Tom riddle once more.

Vetinari looked at Tom, looked through him. After several long moments, he said, “You made one mistake, really.”

Tom sneered at Vetinari, still so calm, so arrogant. “And that would be?”

Vetinari replied, “You wanted it too much.”

Tom, predictably, exploded. “What do you mean, ‘I wanted it too mach’? Of course I wanted it, you idiot child! Power, immortality, the fear and respect of the masses…who wouldn’t want it ‘too much’!”

Vetinari, still calm, replied again, “No, you wanted revenge. Revenge will get you nothing but, well, I think I don’t need to enumerate that, do I?”

“So, little boy, what would you suggest?”

“Well, what do you really want?”

“Immortality!”

“It appears you already have that.”

“Fine, I want power. I want to rule this world and all who live in it.”

Vetinari smiled. “That’s better. That is a goal we can work with.”

Vetinari closed his eyes and an old, beaten book popped into his hands, which he tossed to Tom.

Tom turned the book over and over again in his hands, examining the title. “The Prince? What I am supposed to do with this?”

“It’s a book. You read it. The most pertinent part for this conversation is in chapter three.”

Tom glared again at Vetinari, who appeared not to notice and he flipped to Chapter 3. Muttering, he read,

“But the difficulties occur in a new principality. And firstly, if it be not entirely new, but is, as it were, a member of a state which, taken collectively, may be called composite, the changes arise chiefly from an inherent difficulty which there is in all new principalities; for men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules: wherein they are deceived, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. This follows also on another natural and common necessity, which always causes a new prince to burden those who have submitted to him with his soldiery and with infinite other hardships which he must put upon his new acquisition.

“In this way you have enemies in all those whom you have injured in seizing that principality, and you are not able to keep those friends who put you there because of your not being able to satisfy them in the way they expected, and you cannot take strong measures against them, feeling bound to them. For, although one may be very strong in armed forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives.”

Tom looked up from the text and said, “What does this have to do with me? I need nothing from anyone!”

Vetinari favored him with a look that said, “You are a slow student so I will use smaller words and simpler sentences to make sure you understand.”

“The passage you read would easily be summed by this: do not inflict undue hardship on the common man. The harder you make their lives during your takeover, the more likely they are to oppose you.”

Tom shrugged. “I’m not worried about what some ignorant mudbloods and squibs can do to me.”

Vetinari shrugged back. “Didn’t you tell me it was one of those ‘mudbloods’ who caused your downfall?”

“You may have a point, boy. So, how would you go about your takeover? Hypothetically, of course?”

Vetinari leaned forward, intent. “Make them want you.”

Tom laughed, a high, brittle sound. “Idiot child, after all that has come and gone, they will never desire to be under my rule.”

“They could, you know. You just have to offer them what they all really want.”

“Money? Power? I don’t want to give those things to others.”

“No. Not money. Never power. Just…stability.”

“Stability?”

“Yes, stability. At the start of the day, all everyone really wants is to know that today will be the same as yesterday and tomorrow will follow in the same pattern. Of course, you first have to make them crave that stability with a period of severe instability.”

“Crave stability?”

Vetinari smirked. “You may just catch on yet. Here’s the key: you cannot appear to have anything to do with the previous instability. You can start it, be involved in it right up to your earlobes, but you cannot be seen to be so involved. You must be the disinterested third party, who brings stability in your wake. If you can do this, the people, these ‘mudbloods’ and ‘squibs’, will follow you like lost lambs.”

“And then I will crush them!”

Vetinari sighed. “I think you’re missing a crucial point here.”

Tom became Voldemort again. “And that would be…” he hissed.

“You need the sheep. You need the common man, the rabble. They need to be placated.”

“And how does that serve my purposes?”

“If they are placated, they will not rebel. They will not fight you. You will be seen as a benevolent ruler, not a blood thirsty dictator. Learn what all rulers before you have had to learn – mostly the hard way. Push the sheep long enough, they will push back. And there are a lot more sheep than there are of you.”

“Nonsense, when I come to my full power, they will fear me!”

Vetinari sighed again. “Read chapter eight.”

“Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.

“And above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be under any obligation to you for them.”

Tom lowered the book sullenly. “Fine, I see your point. Treat the rubbish like treasure or they will revolt.”

“Excellent. I think you’re beginning to grasp this. Now about these Death Eaters of yours…”

At this time, daylight began to filter into the clearing, dissipating the chill and disturbing the shroud surrounding Vetinari.

Inside the dreamscape, Tom Riddle began to fade. “No! We are not done yet!”

Vetinari stretched. “It must be time to awaken. Well, it’s been fun, really. Good luck taking over the world and all that.”

Voldemort roared incoherently as he faded out of the dream and the grey fog dissolved into wakefulness.

~/~/~/~

Vetinari awoke stiff and chilled form sleeping on the dirt, the snake lying dead next to the embers of his fire and the charcoal sausages. With a few careful stretches he cleared the stiffness from his limber body, and with wakefulness, the tatters of his dream faded from his mind. Gathering up his camp, he followed the path out of the forest, feeling that same tripwire sensation as before when he rejoined the path to Lancre.


End file.
